For
some reason I always think of the word “hunker”
as a Time Magazine word: “The marines hunkered down
in their foxholes”; “Residents of the tiny island are
hunkering down for another vicious hurricane season”; “Wall
Street veterans are hunkering down in anticipation of another
‘market correction.’”

Eleven
years subscribing to Time and I still don’t know
what the word means. Not exactly. But I’m
pretty sure what I was doing deep down inside my camel hair coat
that murderously cold winter morning was hunkering.

The
pitiful little kiosk at the bus stop was filled with hunkerers,
although they chose to hunker independently of each other.
Cattle may huddle together to share their warmth in the winter
cold, but in that respect your average cow shows her smarts over
your average commuter. If you found yourself unconsciously
gravitating toward one of the other bundled figures hoping to
generate some warmth in a combined hunker, your hoped-for
heatmate would – rather consciously – sidle away.
The threat of frostbite held no candle (pardon the conflicted
imagery) to preserving personal space.

So,
there we were, the usual morning crowd waiting for the 7:03
which, no doubt, would arrive later than 7:03 owing to the snow
which had fallen the better part of the night and was still
falling. At least I presumed we were the usual morning
crowd since I could see none of the usual identifying markers.
Collars were pulled up, hats pulled down, hoods cinched closed,
scarves tucked in and around. The only human element
showing through gaps in the swaddling were teary eyes squinting
against the wind. The London Fog coat, the candy-red
goulashes, the arctic cap, the pink nylon ski jacket, the
Pittsburgh Steelers woolen watch cap...I knew I must’ve
seen them before, but I had no faces in mind to attach to them.
Having absolutely no clue as to what the current fashion
standards were, I couldn’t even be sure as to whether or
not candy-red goulashes and Steelers’ caps indicated –
respectively – female or male.

The
usual nods and barely perceptible smiles which passed as hellos
between people who would rather still be home asleep (warmly
asleep, I should say), or were more interested in their morning
reading, had also disappeared inside the anti-weather sheathing.
Our fingers stinging from the cold wind, our feet damp and cold
from the slush which had baptized us all as we had struggled
through the narrow passage cut through the snow banks the plows
had thrown up along the curb, we were less concerned with
observing even the cursory niceties of commuting than with trying
not to freeze to death.

I
fumbled my Time out of my briefcase with clumsy, numbed
fingers. My Italian-made gloves, a stocking stuffer from my
wife, were elegant, admirably flexible, color-complemented to my
coat, and near-useless in that kind of wind chill. That
morning I had reached for the caution-light-yellow moosehide
mittens I’d bought on our vacation in Quebec that fall but
Eileen had refused to let me out of the house so mismatched.

“Where
are the gloves I gave you for Christmas? Don’t you
like them?”

“These
are warm.”

“They
look hideous!”

“These
are warm!”

“You
are not going to the office with those things hanging
from those sleeves!”

“But
– ”

“Hideous!”

After
that exchange, it seemed the better part of discretion to avoid
even broaching the topic of stocking cap vs. the “cute”
little duffer’s cap she was holding out to me (this a
recent birthday present). The only proper response was to
wear the gloves, the cute cap, smile gratefully that she had
prevented me from committing a grievous style faux pas, then
step outside to my frigid doom.

I
tried turning my back to the wind but it was a rather cunning
gale. No matter how one turned, the cold air whipped inside
the half-walls of the kiosk, whirled about until it found some
gap in your winterwear through which it stabbed deeply and,
needless to say, coldly.

I
tried to focus my stinging eyes on the “Letters to the
Editor” section, but the wind was so ferocious the page
corner flapped like a hummingbird’s wings and began to
tear. I experimented with different one-handed grips
thinking if I could hold the magazine in one-handed relays,
keeping the other buried deep in my coat pocket, switching hands
as the exposed one grew numb, I might yet come through the
morning with a few fingers left. But, since it would only
take a few seconds for the in-use hand to succumb to the cold, I
spent more time switching hands than reading. I kept at it,
though, not out of dedication to being an informed citizen, but
in the hope reading might take my mind off the slush which had
seeped in over the rim of my Totes and at how late the bus was
running.

“Excuse
me!”

He
had to shout to cut through the wind as well as my concentration
on the “Conventional Wisdom” column. It
occurred to me perhaps he’d been standing there shouting at
me for some time, but I’d only just now heard him.

My
cold-addled responses were a bit sluggish. I looked up from
“Conventional Wisdom” and blinked against the wind at
the shorter, parka-clad figure in front of me. It hadn’t
yet come to me a response was required.

“Excuse
me!” he tried again.

He
was wearing an enviably warm-looking parka, the kind I’d
only seen in documentaries about the arctic. He was also
wearing amber-tinted snow goggles, some kind of synthetic snow
pants and well-broken-in Timberlines. Not color-coordinated
at all, but damned warm, I guessed. From under his hood,
mixed in with the fur trim, was an exploding shock of napalm-red
hair.

I
motioned at myself with my magazine, asking if he meant me.

“Can
you help me out?”

I
made a show of looking past him for my bus, inferring perhaps he
should better ask someone else as I’d be leaving
momentarily.

“I
just need a little help,” he said.

There
was a rather unfortunate history to the bus stop and I’m
sure my fellow hunkerers – like me – were waiting to
see if the parka-clad little fellow would make a sudden lunge,
shoving copies of Watchtower at me, or ask for “spare
change,” or if I was interested in a charcoal water
filtration system or AMWAY floor wax. I looked around the
kiosk and saw my commuter colleagues had subtly sidled away.
I was on my own.

I
took a good look at him, then.

He
had pushed the fur-trimmed rim of his hood back from his face a
bit. It was a young face, but beaten into saddle leather by
weather, marked with a hesitant scrub along his jaw line, and,
peeping over his shoulder like a sunrise, was a Day-Glo orange
backpack, one of those huge contraptions running from shoulder to
rump, capped with what I assumed was some kind of bedroll.

“I
need some directions,” he said. He pushed his hood
back still further revealing more of that head of matted,
blindingly red hair. “I’m a little lost,”
he said and flashed brilliantly white teeth in a slightly
embarrassed smile.

“Where
are you going?”

“North.”

“North
where?”

“Just
north. I hitched up on the highway – what is it?
Two-eighty-seven? And I’ve been hoofing it since this
morning, but I’m all turned around now.”

“Two-eighty-seven
has to be five, six miles from here.” It was a
woman’s voice, coming from inside the hood of the pink
nylon ski jacket now hovering by my shoulder. She opened
her hood a bit and I recognized her; a shy smile over the top of
a TV Guide most mornings. She flashed me that shy
smile now, then turned back to the traveler. “You
must’ve been walking all morning.”

The
shrug of his shoulders was barely readable through his thick
parka. “I guess.”

“Where’d
you come up from?” the pink nylon ski jacket asked.

“Well,
I was in Delaware last night, made it up from Virginia the day
before. I just need to get pointed north.”

“Aren’t
you cold?” This from the London Fog coat.

“It’s
not too bad in here. I’m ok.”

“What’re
you, one of Santa’s elves or something?” asked the
Pittsburgh Steelers cap. “What’re you headin’
that way for? You wanna take a long hike, hike to Florida
or somethin’.”

He
laughed, acknowledging the sense of the observation. “Got
some friends up in New Hampshire. We’re supposed to
hook up and then head on up to Toronto.”

“What’s
in Toronto?” I asked.

The
shrug, again, and that white, white smile. “We’ve
just never been.”

“Further
north you go, it’s just going to get colder,” from
the woman (I think) in the candy-red goulashes.

“I’ll
be ok.”

None
of us were too sure which way north was, but we confabulated a
bit, came up with what we considered a reasonable estimate, and
were pointing the young trekker on his way by the time the 7:03
showed up ten minutes late.

The
kiosk crew filed on the bus but I held back, watching that
iridescent backpack bob off through the blowing snow.

“Are
you sure you’re going to be all right?” I called to
him.

He
turned around without stopping, trudging backwards, one mittened
hand raised and waving. “Fine, thanks,” he
smiled, “If it gets really bad, I’ll just lay up
somewhere.”

“Do
you need some money to call your friends?”

He
shook his head, the smile turning grateful, then he waved a
thanks, turned about and marched off, leaning into the wind.

The
interior of the bus was steamy from the bulky shapes wedged into
the narrow seats. There was still room in the back. I
took a seat in the last row and wiped a little porthole in the
mist covering the window.

“Some
kinda elf,” I heard from somewhere in the bus.

I
got one last glimpse of that radiant backpack, bouncing to his
steady cadence, then the bus engine revved and I lost him in a
cloud of blue exhaust.

Bill
Mesce, Jr. is a
produced screenwriter and playwright, and published author of
fiction and non-fiction. His most recent titles are the
novel Four Day
Shoot and
academic work, Overkill:
The Rise and Fall of Thriller Cinema.
His one-act play, A
Good Kid, was
included in the anthology, One
Acts of Note 2008 from
Desert Road Publishing. He lives in New Jersey.